Would you like to significantly improve your health in just 10 minutes a day? With interval training, that significant improvement is possible, even if you’re accustomed to working out for 30 to 60 minutes a day.

Why is this possible? Because interval training exercises your body in a way that is vastly differently than traditional cardio programs. Traditional cardio programs increases the efficiency level of the heart and lungs so that they can better supply oxygen and energy to the muscles and subsequently increase muscular endurance. Traditional cardio also burns a high percentage of fat calories or energy. Both seem like strong benefits, right?

However, traditional cardio programs train the body at a relatively low exertion level for an extended period of time. This has two effects.

First, the heart and lungs are not conditioned for sudden and severe increases in activity, like running to catch a young child who’s about to step out into traffic or joining in a pick-up game of basketball. These are the kinds of activities that most often trigger heart attacks, because the heart is not strong enough and big enough to handle the sudden and massive need for increased blood flow.

Second, slow steady-state cardio training burns so few calories that it takes a lot of cardio to burn a significant number of fat calories.

Interval training, on the other hand, conditions the heart to handle rapid increases in activity, thus lowering your chances of having a heart attack, and it compresses exercise time by burning more total calories in a short period of time.

What is Interval Training?

Interval training is a style of cardio exercise that alternates periods of high-intensity exercise with periods of low-intensity exercise. An example of interval training would be alternating 30-second sprints with one or two minutes of walking. If you repeat this sprint-walk interval 10 times, you can see how your heart and lungs would adapt to sudden increases in activity.

It’s also not hard to see how sprinting would burn calories faster than walking or jogging. You burn more calories because you cover more ground in less time and because it takes more muscle to move your body faster. On average, a 160-pound person will burn 100 calories per mile. If you jog at 6 mph, it will take 20 minutes to burn 200 calories. However, if you sprint at an average of 12 mph, it will take less than 10 minutes.

How to Get Started

Of course, when you first start out, you will not be able to compress 20 minutes of exercise into 10 minutes. Start with 20 minutes of low-intensity exercise, and count how many miles, yards, steps or repetitions you can do in that time. Keep it to a comfortable pace this first week to get used to the increase in activity. Each week set a goal to reduce the time it takes to complete that much work by 1-2 minutes.

The ideal interval workout consists of 10 minutes in which you perform five intervals that include 30 to 60 seconds of high-intensity exercise with 1-2 minutes of low-intensity exercise.

Here is one way to get to that point: Start by dividing your 20-minute workout into five intervals of 4 minutes each. In each interval, exercise at a comfortable pace for three minutes and at a slightly faster pace for one minute. If jogging is your chosen cardio exercise, you will jog at a comfortable pace for three minutes and go to a light run for one minute. Each week reduce your total time by 1 ¼ minutes by cutting 15 seconds from your low-intensity period and making up the extra distance or repetitions by increasing the speed of your high-intensity interval. Note, that the high-intensity interval remains one minute long.

Once you reach a point where you can’t increase the speed or intensity of your high-intensity interval any further, start increasing the speed of your low intensity interval. However, make sure there is a significant difference between the high-intensity interval and low-intensity interval.

Once you are able to do your original 20-minute workout in 10 minutes, take a week off from all exercise. Then do the following: Do your new 10-minute interval workout, then add 10 more minutes of comfortable-pace exercise onto the end. Write down your total distance, steps or reps for the 20 minutes. Now, on each workout, do your new 10-minute interval workout for the first 10 minutes. Divide the second 10 minutes or additional distance/steps/reps into three intervals that are 3 to 4 minutes long. Gradually shorten your new intervals, as you did before, until your total workout time is less than 15 minutes.

You can repeat this procedure every 13 weeks. Make sure that you do your workout at least twice a week. If, at any point, you cannot complete the workout as scheduled, take a few extra days off and pick up where you left off.

Although the examples used in this article involve jogging, running and sprinting, it is possible to do interval training with other forms of exercise. For example, you could alternate marching in place with calisthenics. Or, you could alternate several high-intensity barbell exercises with rest periods. Interval training works with any exercise that raises your heart rate close to its maximum, combined with any exercise that allows you to rest while still exerting yourself a bit.

About the author - John E. Fike is a professional writer specializing in health and fitness writing and marketing copy. With more than 8 years of professional writing experience, John can provide you with the custom e-books, articles and marketing copy you need to grow your business. Contact him today by emailing john[at]proclaimstudios.com or go online to www.johnefike.com.

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